I bought a long ethernet cable to run a wired network to the living room for all of the A/V equipment in setting up, as well as providing a new location for my HTPC. I thought it would be fairly easy, but I was wrong.

Drilling through the living room floor was easy, and the biggest bit I had was just big enough for the RJ-45 plug. Then I went to drill the hole in the back bedroom. At first it went quite quickly, right through the wood. Then progress stopped. When I went upstairs I found out why. Most of the house has wood floors on a wood subfloor, but the back bedroom has a concrete floor which came as quite a surprise. I found a shallow area of concrete near the door jamb, but couldn’t get through, probably running into a joist. So I went back to the basement to try it again with the hole I started earlier.

I don’t have any masonry bits, so improvisation was the name of the game. I did find a few narrow spade bits that seemed pretty sharp. They went right up through the concrete, and eventually I was able to use that large bit too finish the hole. Yeah, I’ll probably need to sharpen them before using them again, but it’s done.

The hole was still too small for the connector on that 100 ft cable, so I used a short cable without the snag- resistant connector to go through the floor, mating it up in the basement with a double female adapter thingy. Yeah, I might not get the full speed that I should get with a Cat 6e cable, but whatever - it’s just for watching TV. It’ll be fine.